Page:CooperBull1(2).djvu/2

18 be evolved, with a red face and no song.

As I was duly informed that no one was allowed to kill mockingbirds on Catalina, I, of course, did not do so. However, I succeeded in measuring the middle toes of several specimens, and they agreed in being longer than in the case of our Pasadena mockingbirds.

I secured one very interesting specimen, a partial albino Dusky Warbler, Helminthophila celata sordida. Several of the wing feathers and many of the body feathers are of a very light yellow tint, in marked contrast with the normal dark olive green of the rest of the plumage. Hummingbirds were remarkably numerous about the blossoming eucalyptus trees in Avalon. They were the Allen's Hummingbird, Selasphorus alleni. It is curious that this species, occurring on the adjacent mainland only in the spring and fall migrations, should remain throughout the winter on Catalina, in the same latitude and only twenty-five or thirty miles distant. As it breeds commonly on Catalina, this hummingbird is undoubtedly the resident form, while the Anna's Hummingbird is the resident species around Pasadena.

Among the land-birds, I was surprised not to find any Song Sparrows, Horned Larks or Meadowlarks, all of which are more or less common on Santa Barbara and San Clemente Islands.

After collecting small birds for four days very successfully, and, as I was told by a tourist, robbing the landscape of half its beauty, I determined to start in robbing the water-scape. So, in the afternoon I boarded the "Fleet-wing" for a cruise out around Seal Rock to see what there might be in the line of water birds. I was very successful in shooting away some twenty-five shells, but rather disappointed in securing but one bird, a sickly loon. However, the fact that this loon was sickly, was rather of a blessing, for the bird was delightfully lean, and the skin did not require the usual amount of cutting and scraping necessary to remove the fat which is present in such great quantities on a normal loon skin. This trip, though not bringing many specimens, taught me one thing, that a noisy, wheezy, coughing gasoline launch is the last vessel to choose to hunt birds on. They almost all departed before the boat was within long range. Another thing, distances on the water appear a great deal shorter than they really are. One member of our party persisted in shooting at shags which were fully 150 yards distant when he declared they were within fifty yards. Shags are hard to kill, anyway. Seventy-five shells were fired and two birds dropped.

On Wednesday, December 29, my friend, Mr. Ferguson, came over to Avalon, and we decided to take a trip after water birds the next day. We secured a very neat looking round-bottomed boat, with two pairs of oars and row-locks, and just big enough for two. It had not been used for some time but the boatman assured us it would not leak. Accordingly we started early the next morning, but we had scarcely got beyond Sugar Loaf, before the boat was half full of water, more or less, and from that time on, we had to bail it out with a battered tomato can every few minutes. But such little things should not disturb an enthusiastic bird collector.

Before we had gone as far as White's Landing, I thought I discerned a stranger in the distance, and sure enough a closer view proved that we were in pursuit of a rare bird, none other than the Rhinoceros Auklet, with which this paper is supposed to mainly deal. With such a prize before us, we rowed for all we were worth, and soon were in fair range of it. A shot from a rocking boat at a target on the rolling waves, is not the easiest imaginable, and ours failed, or rather, the instant we fired, our Auklet disappeared in the water. We then rowed with "might and main" to the spot where the circling ripples told us the bird had gone down. We waited breathlessly with guns cocked. One of us was supposed to watch for him on one side of the boat, and one on the other, but after each had scanned his own horizon, neither would trust the other, and we really watched sharper on the opposite side of the boat than on our own. It was an exciting moment, for we had no idea